The Service Lift of Death
by firekid44
Summary: Possibly one-shot. The Doctor ends up trapped during an invasion, with only one creature there for company. Slightly ridiculous.


The Doctor sprinted down the corridor as laser fire shot past him, desperately trying to remember where he'd left the TARDIS. Behind him he could hear the sound of the pursuing Sontarans, but he was faster than they were and he was gaining ground every second. He flinched slightly as a shot went through his jacket, leaving a small clean hole through the material. He turned his body to jog backwards for a moment, looking back at the Sontarans.  
>"Hey! This suit was freshly washed!" he shouted, before quickly ducking a blast aimed at his head. He grinned and rounded a corner, before ducking into a service lift and pressing himself against the wall. The doors slid shut silently as the Sontarans came storming around the corner. A cry of "Seal off the building!" came through the thin metal doors, but the Sontarans charged on without noticing the lift and the rumble of their footsteps quickly faded. The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief and pressed the button for the top floor – he was pretty sure that was where he wanted to be.<p>

The lift shuddered and began its slow ascent, the sounds of battle drifting in on various floors. The Doctor's eyes were fixed on the gradually increasing numbers indicating the floor they'd reached.  
>"Come on, come on..." he growled quietly. 11... 12... 13...<br>The lift stopped suddenly but the doors remained shut. The Doctor frowned and looked down at the buttons. This wasn't his floor, he'd pressed 15, but the lift had stopped moving and didn't show any signs of starting again. As he turned to find a maintenance panel, there was a fizzling sound from above him and the lights dimmed, plunging him into complete darkness.  
>"They must have cut the power..." he realised with a sigh. Usually this wouldn't be a problem, but his sonic screwdriver had been fried only minutes earlier, so it would take a lot of work to get things moving again. He grimaced and pulled a torch out of his jacket, determined to find the panel, before suddenly noticing a strange glint at the back of the lift. There was something stood there, something he hadn't noticed in the heat of the moment, but now he had noticed it...<br>"Doc-tor..." it grated. The Doctor's eyes widened.  
>"I thought it was just Sontarans..." he murmured. "But here we have ourselves a Dalek..."<p>

The Dalek moved slowly toward him, its gun twitching up and down as it did so.  
>"So what's a Dalek doing in the back of a service lift?" the Doctor wondered aloud, edging gradually sideways as the gun pointed toward his chest. "How did you even get in here? You couldn't press the buttons, you don't have hands!" He waved his own hands in the air to prove his point. The Dalek turned slowly, still following him with its gun.<br>"It was an unfortunate occurrence," it replied eventually. "I was propelled through an opening by powers beyond my control. The doors closed before I was able to regain movement." The Doctor tilted his head curiously and glanced down at his watch. Of course... he hadn't had time to realise, but he'd landed the day after the Battle of Canary Wharf. So this Dalek...  
>"You were in the Genesis Ark?" he realised. He spun around quickly to estimate directions... yes, the doors were on a direct path to the Torchwood building. The Dalek must have been blown in when he tried to seal them all off in the Void. Well, that explained why the thing was in here, anyway. But...<br>"Why haven't you killed me?" he asked carefully. The gun was still trained on him, twitching periodically, but he would have expected it to shoot by now: Daleks weren't known for taking prisoners.  
>"My weaponry is impaired," the Dalek grated. The Doctor beamed.<br>"Well then that's great!" he said. "I have no reason to worry now, other than the Sontarans out there, but UNIT are on that. Well, and the fact we're trapped in here, but that's fine too. That's not a problem. Well, it is, but... that's a problem."  
>"You have your sonic device?"<br>"Um... not exactly." The charred remains of the screwdriver sat uncomfortably in his pocket, and he pulled it out to throw onto the floor. The Dalek's eyestalk tilted down to look at it.  
>"So you are also without weaponry," it stated, looking back up at the Doctor. He laughed.<br>"It's not a weapon, you know that," he said. "I don't use weapons."  
>"But you still destroy." The Doctor glanced away for a moment before looking angrily back at the Dalek.<br>"I did what I had to do," he growled. "The Time War was a threat to the entire universe, from both sides. Dalek and Time Lord, they were both to blame." The Dalek remained silent, watching him as he began pacing up and down.  
>"I don't start anything," he continued. "You know that, you all know that, I never attack first. I never begin the conflict. It's always you, getting too big for your boots, attacking the humans. Always the humans!" He threw his arms up in frustration.<br>"Why is every race so obsessed with killing humans?" The Dalek considered for a moment.  
>"Daleks do not possess boots." The Doctor froze mid-step, one foot hanging in the air.<br>"Was that... did you just make a joke?" he asked slowly. The Dalek went silent again. Surely it couldn't have... Daleks didn't have the concept of humour, how could it make a joke?  
>"Are you sure you're really a Dalek?" he asked.<br>"Yes."  
>"Weird." The Doctor breathed heavily and leaned against the wall. Maybe this wasn't happening, maybe it was just a hallucination. After all, how likely was it that he'd get trapped in a lift which just happened to contain a Dalek? And without either of them able to do anything to the other but talk?<p>

"The battle's ended," the Doctor noted, pressing an ear to the door. He looked back at the Dalek again, his mind buzzing. Maybe it was the next step in the Dalek's mutation somehow, regaining their emotions. Was that possible? He drummed his fingers irritated on the wall, unable to think of anything to say to the Dalek.  
>"What do you do?" he asked eventually. The Dalek's eyestalk looked up at him.<br>"What?" it grated in reply.  
>"What do you do when you're not... well, when you're not with me?"<br>"We conquer. We kill."  
>"Yeah, I know that much, but..." How could he phrase this? "What do you do when you're just with Daleks? When there's no-one around to fight, nothing around to blow up, what do you do?"<br>"We find something." Huh. Figures, really. He couldn't really have been expecting anything else, could he? It was a Dalek, after all. He sighed as lift rumbled and began to move. The Doctor jumped and looked around. Clearly the winning side had brought power back to the building. He just hoped it was UNIT.

The doors slid open on the 15th floor to reveal a semi-circle of armed men and women, all training their guns on the Doctor. He quickly held up his hands in surrender.  
>"It's okay, it's the Doctor," said one of them, and the rest of the group lowered their weapons to allow the Doctor to step out.<br>"I miss the Brigadier," he mused, looking around at the hardened faces peering into the lift.  
>"There's a Dalek in there!" one of them shouted suddenly. The Doctor looked back at it. It was helpless, and it might be the first good Dalek he'd ever met. He managed to get the word "Don't-" out before noticing the small explosive that had just been thrown through the closing doors. There was a moment of silence followed by a short, controlled explosion from inside the lift.<br>"...shoot."


End file.
